After dropping Tobias at school I had a short walk around Pennington Marsh before work. There was a patch tick to be seen and so I headed straight to Butts Lagoon. It was not long before the
Spotted Crake showed along the reed margin in the south-west corner of the lagoon but views were rather brief as it made its way rapidly along the southern shore of the lagoon to the south-east corner largely keeping to cover. I then watched it for the next 45 minutes feeding along the reed edge in the south-east corner of the lagoon although mainly it kept within the cover of the reeds. Unfortunately, the bird was too distant for any photographs. Otherwise, it seemed fairly quite, a lone
Reed Warbler in the reeds on Butts Lagoon and two
Chiffchaff were the only warblers that I recorded. Small numbers of
Yellow Wagtail are still around the cattle but they are incredibly difficult to see in the long grassland - there were perhaps 15 in total. On the lagoons it was fairly quiet with a single juvenile
Ruff, 25
Dunlin, 15
Black-tailed Godwit but I only covered Butts and Fishtail before heading off.
On my way to drop Tobias at school I saw a bird on top of some burnt gorse on Setley Plain, just south of Brockenhurst which looked remarkably Woodchat Shrike like and so I turned around and went back for a quick look, as time was short I was only able to scan from the car. On the way back from Pennington I stopped and spent an hour looking for the bird but with no luck. There were seven
Stonechat, 15
House Martin and a few
Meadow Pipit but no sign of anything shrike like, I concluded that I must have been mistaken - easily done when birding and driving.
Ruff - Fishtail Lagoon, Pennington Marsh
Dunlin - Fishtail Lagoon, Pennington Marsh
Dunlin - Fishtail Lagoon, Pennington Marsh
Dunlin - Fishtail Lagoon, Pennington Marsh
Dunlin - Fishtail Lagoon, Pennington Marsh
Black-tailed Godwit - Fishtail Lagoon, Pennington Marsh
Meadow Pipit - Setley Plain, Brockenhurst
